Cat is an Information Officer at Community First Yorkshire, where she’s passionate about making information easy to understand, accessible and genuinely useful for people.

She has a particular interest in inclusive communication and is always curious about how workplaces can better support different ways of thinking and working.

Read her reflections on a recent Neurodiversity training session she attended.

How can we support neurodivergent people at work? Some reflections

I recently joined one of Community First Yorkshire’s Neurodiversity at Work sessions led by Jo Holloway Green, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Not so much the definitions or the ‘how-to’ advice, but the bigger question it raised: what does it really mean to create a workplace where different ways of thinking are genuinely supported?

I realised I’d been thinking about neurodivergence in quite a factual way – an umbrella term for autism, ADHD, dyslexia and more. But reframing it as natural differences in how people think and process the world made me notice how narrow our workplace ‘norms’ can be.

What struck me most was how many barriers are hidden in plain sight: bright, noisy environments, vague instructions, packed schedules and an expectation that everyone communicates in the same way. These things feel standard – but for some people, they’re exhausting.

We talked about ‘reasonable adjustments,’ though in practice they felt like simple acts of consideration: softer lighting, headphones, written instructions, quiet spaces. It made me wonder how often we stick to ‘business as usual’ without asking – usual for who?

The conversation around communication stayed with me too. It’s easy to misread behaviours – seeing interrupting as rudeness, avoiding eye contact as disengagement, taking things literally as inflexibility. But what if the issue is our interpretation, not the behaviour?

That shift requires a bit of humility – recognising that our own way of communicating isn’t the baseline, just one of many.

Something else that stood out: many of the tools and adjustments we discussed – clearer structure, better planning, more flexibility – would likely benefit everyone. They’re just essential for some.

So, my biggest takeaway wasn’t a checklist. It was a mindset shift. Supporting neurodivergent colleagues isn’t about asking individuals to fit the system – it’s about being willing to adapt the system itself.

I’m still figuring out what that looks like day-to-day. But it’s made me more aware of the small ways people might be struggling – and the equally small ways we can make things easier.

That feels like a good place to start.